The present invention is drawn to a device for withdrawing a metal ingot from the mold of a continuous casting system by means of a pulling facility which is attached to a starter block or the like and is partly surrounded by the casted strand.
At the state of casting in a continuous casting system, in particular in the case of so called horizontal continuous casting machines, the metal strand is usually engaged by a split screw cast into the ingot and then pulled out of the mold by said screw. This method suffers from a number of disadvantages, one being that the quality of the starting end of the ingot is poor due to the screw which remains in the end and therefore is unusable. The end pieces can only be remelted. In addition a new pulling facility is needed for the start of each casting. Also, it has been found that the split screws frequently break resulting in the ingot coming to a standstill which causes a delay in the casting process.
Therefore, it is the principal object of the present invention to develop a device for withdrawing a metal strand from a mold wherein, the pulling facility can be removed from the ingot without leaving any residue, and can be used again. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a pulling facility which requires little time for installation and therefore eliminate the danger of interruption of casting due to the above mentioned fracture of the screw. Another object of the present invention is to provide a pulling facility which exhibits a long service life and which is relatively maintainance free.